A 19-year-old man accused of murdering a 1-month-old baby in 2008 has now been charged with trying to hire a hit man last month to kill a witness in the case.

Darrel Marcell Chambers was arraigned Thursday under accusations that, while he was in jail, he tried to pay someone to kill his cousin on July 15. His cousin is expected to testify in Chambers' trial for murder in February 2010. Chambers was charged in Multnomah County Circuit Court with nine counts, including conspiring to commit aggravated murder and tampering with a witness.

Details of who Chambers allegedly tried to hire, how much he reportedly offered to pay and how the alleged plan came to the attention of the district attorney's office are unclear.

The new charges are on top of murder and murder-by-abuse charges Chambers faces in the death of Julian Wear. Chambers, then 18, told authorities after his June 2008 arrest that he fathered the boy with his 16-year-old girlfriend. One month after his arrest, however, papers filed by the district attorney's office name a different man as the boy's father.

Julian was rushed by ambulance to the hospital on March 29, 2008 from a home in the 18200 block of Northeast Flanders Street in Gresham. Julian was unconscious, having trouble breathing and suffered brain injuries and a skull fracture. He died 55 hours later.

Although Chambers told authorities that he thought he was the baby's father, he also said he didn't know how old the boy was, only that he was younger than 1 year old. Chambers was unemployed, living on $440 a month in disability because his bones break easily. He said he'd smoked "weed" two weeks earlier.
-- Aimee Green; aimeegreen@news.oregonian.com